Small neighborhood-businesses catering to local business needs typically get most of their revenue from a repeat clientele. Some small businesses also offer products and services that can be sold to consumers beyond the local boundaries. Small businesses use a variety of means to advertise to their potential customer base; however, because of limited advertising budgets and lack of brand awareness, most of these means are ineffective in marketing the products and services to the target audience.
Most small businesses advertise their presence in one or more printed yellow pages directories. These businesses also advertise their products and services by sending coupons, promotions, and other business related content via newspapers, and miscellaneous local publications. Most of these advertising materials are usually treated as junk mail by consumers. As a result, such advertising is largely ignored by consumers, including advertising that may actually be of interest to them.
Many small businesses are turning to the Internet to reach consumers. Many small businesses have been advertising their presence in one or more online yellow pages websites and are also accessible via internet search engines. Many small businesses also maintain websites providing information that is relevant to promoting their business. However, online marketing poses significant challenges for these small businesses. One of the primary challenges faced is that their websites are relatively unknown to consumers and as a result do not attract enough visits by existing or potential customers. The registered user base if any for these websites is minimal as most consumers are reluctant to provide email addresses or other contact information for the purposes of receiving promotional or informational communications from vendors. Also, these small businesses typically lack the technical expertise to make changes to their websites on an ongoing basis. As a result, these websites tend to maintain minimal functionality primarily limited to displaying content that does not change frequently, content such as, but not limited to, addresses, hours of operations, menus, and media reviews. Promotions or communications that need to be sent out or posted frequently are typically not reflected on the website. With such rudimentary websites, it is difficult for these small businesses and consumers to communicate intelligently and effectively via websites for the purposes of mutually beneficial business transactions.
To send online content such as, but not limited to, advertisements, promotions, and general notifications, the sending party, for example, without limitation, a commercial or a non-commercial entity, requires the email address of the receiving party. This email address is typically provided by the receiving party during registration on the website of the sending party. This approach of sending and receiving content has numerous drawbacks for both the parties. The receiving party is forced to divulge personal information such as, but not limited to, an email address and cannot maintain anonymity. If the receiving party is interested in receiving such content from multiple sending parties, the receiving party must independently register on the website of each sending party. As a result, the receiving party has to track and maintain these multiple registered accounts. Furthermore, once registered, the receiving party typically receives all content from the sending party, whether of relevance or not to the interests of the receiving party. There is no good way for the receiving party to specifically describe or limit the type of content that the receiving party is interested in receiving from the sending party. The receiving party is forced to receive all content sent out by the sending party. The content is received primarily in the form of electronic mail (email) and the receiving party must spend time and effort to read the email and ascertain whether the content is of any relevance to their needs.
As for the drawbacks for the sending party, the sending party is required to maintain at least a current email address of recipients. If this email address becomes invalid and the recipients do not update registration information with the sending party, the sending party is not able to deliver the content to the recipients. Furthermore, the sending party uses the subject line of the email to identify the nature of the content being delivered via the email. The subject line may be somewhat indicative of the email content. However, this indication is primarily of a general nature in free form text, and typically not very specific. Thus the sending parties have no way of externally tagging their content, with intelligent information or qualifying descriptors that would help the receiving party quickly and accurately identify the nature of the email content.
The large and medium sized businesses with brand name awareness also face the aforementioned constraints when it comes to online advertising. Other entities facing these challenges associated with reaching audiences via online means include various commercial and non-commercial entities such as, but not limited to, individual owned businesses, apartment complexes, city governments, police departments, and religious bodies.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for an improved method of communication between parties over the Internet that enables the receiving party to receive only communications that are of interest to him. There is also a need for a Web-based form of communication between parties that does not require the sending party to continually update contact information and does not require the receiving party to register with every entity for which he wishes to receive information.
Unless otherwise indicated illustrations in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.